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Introduces a series of articles derived from a March 2002 session of the Association of American Geographers on the geographical work of David Lowenthal. Session's focus on the development of geographical interest in landscape and environmental perception; Areas of scholarship in which Lowenthal worked; Scholarly foundation of Lowenthal's work.

The article presents the author's views on the cartographic theory of Brian Harley. The author's analysis creates a relationship between cartography and geography. The author analyses two aspects of geosophy developed by Matthew Edney. The author draws a resurgent interest in the history of mid-twentieth century America geography.

Medieval mappaemundi carry levels of meaning that have been widely misunderstood. Their compilers have been judged on their ability to show geographical reality structured according to a coordinate system, but the primary function of these maps was to provide illustrated histories or moralized, didactic displays in a geographical setting. That medieval thinkers' understanding of the physical world has also been underestimated is reflected in the frequently repeated views that most medieval scholars thought the earth was flat or that Jerusalem should be shown at its center. This paper challenges these commonly held views in the light of recent reinterpretations in art history and the history of cartography. Several themes are explored, including the type of reality represented by the maps, the way the map center changed as the Middle Ages developed, and the relationship between concepts of the earth's sphericity and the graphic constraints on the mappaemundi. Finally, the study suggests ways in which we can learn from this genre of maps. We need to evaluate the achievements of the Middle Ages on their own terms and in the context of their purpose. More specifically for cartography, the mappaemundi show that maps may also consist of historical aggregations or cumulative inventories of events in addition to representing objects that exist cosynchronously in space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's population is large and its annual growth significant. Since the mid-1950s, the Chinese government has made four attempts to curb the growth and hopes to limit the total population to 1.2 billion by the year 2000. Thus it has established a policy of limiting families to one child each. These efforts of population control have been successful in cities but have fallen short in rural areas. Using the 1982 Chinese census and data from a national sampling on fertility, this paper examines the urban-rural contrasts in demographic and marital behavior, rates of growth, and implementation of the one child policy. It discusses the variables, such as education, occupation, and political factors, that affect the urban and rural populations. The majority of rural couples still desire a larger family. The paper probes the reasons for this and finds that the traditional concerns of old age and family propagation are more important than are economic reasons, such as increasing the family labor force. To implement the one child policy local governments have set forth directives againts second and higher-order births. They also are promoting the development of small towns and the transference of farmers to nonagricultural jobs. The government is attempting to integrate urban and rural administrations and to establish "'population development regions" around the country so that cities can play a central role in population control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents comments of the author on the article "Geographic Inequality Under Socialism," by Roland J. Fuchs and George J. Demko. This paper competently reviews the evidence for the persistence there of spatial inequalities. Their conception of Marxism and their generalizations about the effects of socialism on inequality, are very much subject to question, however. Essentially authors share a misunderstanding with most geographers concerning the nature of Marxist theory and the work of Marxist geographers-thus Marxism is assumed to consist only of a politics, defined narrowly as the advocacy of a certain form of socialist state, one which we are supposed to believe will solve all human problems within a short time.

This paper examines the nature of the French discipline of geography through the research and writings of the eighteenth century geographer, d'Anville, the geographers on the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt (1798–1801), and those involved in the exploration of Algeria (1839–42), and illuminates a major paradigm shift which transformed geography from a science barely recognizable to modern geographers into a social science with many of the dimensions of the modern discipline. In the eighteenth century, French geographers were primarily concerned with locational determination and representation: locating and mapping towns, major natural or human-made features, and provincial and national borders. By the early nineteenth century, there is evidence that geographers were beginning to broaden their interests to include problems that were not strictly locational. In this period of transition, instead of radically reforming their approach, French geographers clung to their traditional methodologies and stretched them to solve nonlocational problems. By the mid-nineteenth century, they had substantially refocused their attention on the general nature of the terrain, description of major landscape features, ’man’ as a being interacting with the environment to produce race and culture, the movement of populations, hegemonic boundaries and territoriality, the history of exploration, and commercial geography. Geography retained an anachronistic and increasingly peculiar concern with the determination of location. This paper represents the first step in an attempt to explore geography's ambiguous role in the intellectual revolution that took place between 1750–1850 and which gave birth to the modern social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I describe and question some of the basic premises, beliefs, and values implicit in the geography of crime. The critique focuses on the analytic separation of crime and the control of crime, a separation that has informed most geographic research on crime. Using an instrumentalist methodology, geographers have studied crime, law, and the judicial system without any systematic consideration of the impact of the control system on crime patterns. A discussion of interactionist and critical perspectives in criminology raises questions about the correctionalist impulse of much of the geography of crime, the prima facie interpretation of official crime statistics guiding it, the hypostatization of criminal behavior informing it, and the general consequences of a perspective that abstracts crime from its sociolegal context. The paper outlines several strategies for developing an integrated analysis of crime and control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As research into human spatial behavior diversifies and progresses, the accumulation of empirical findings seems to outpace the opportunities for conceptual organization in the field. This state of affairs is common in some newer areas of science where classical patterns of explanation are no longer found to be achievable or even relevant. In the quest for conceptual frameworks that would help make sense of research developments defying familiar modes of theorizing, many of these ‘sciences of complexity’ have turned to formal theories of modeling for logical integration and insight. Addressing a similar apparent need in behavioral geography, this paper outlines a framework derived from discrete model theory that clarifies the relationships between three seemingly different types of models of spatial choice (based on the principles of stimulus-response, rational choice, and cognitive information processing). Several general questions of interest to behavioral modelers may be approached in the context of that framework, which could contribute to some of the ongoing empirical work in the field a useful theoretical dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates change in U.S. rail freight flows for the period 1972-81. Hypotheses about possible sources of change in the pattern of flows are generated within a spatial price equilibrium framework and then operationalized as a hierarchical set of Kullback-Leibler models representing inertia, variation in regional imports and exports, and variation in generalized interregional transport cost. Models are calibrated (1) for 1981 compared with all previous years and (2) for adjacent years in the data set. Hypotheses are tested using distribution-free methods. Results indicate that significant change in rail freight flows occurs more rapidly than can be accounted for by existing geographic theory. Change is primarily attributable to variation in regional imports and exports; variation in generalized transport cost is found to be considerably less important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the geography of elections is a major growth point of modern geography, this research area has neglected an important category of elections, those occurring in Third World states. This paper seeks to rectify this limitation by analyzing Ghanaian elections. Studying such Third World elections, however, requires rethinking many theoretical issues on the nature of the state and the political party. This paper outlines a political economy argument for interpreting the electoral geography of Third World countries. The Ghanaian case study is set within a world-systems framework in which the location of peripheral states in the world-economy can result in an unstable “politics of failure.” Ghana is treated as a classic case of the politics of failure. We show how the cultural geography of Ghana is filtered through its political geography in attempts to create a new economic geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the theoretical foundation for a different type of place-centered or regional geography. The framework rests upon an integration of time-geography and the emerging theory of structuration. It also builds upon a conceptualization of place as a constantly becoming human product as well as a set of features visible upon the landscape. Place is seen as a process whereby the reproduction of social and cultural forms, the formation of biographies. and the transformation of nature ceaselessly become one another at the same time that time-space specific activities and power relations continuously become one another. It is further contended that the ways in which these phenomena are interwoven in the becoming of place or region are not subject to universal laws but vary with historical circumstances. Three empirical foci that suggest themselves from the framework are briefly discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the problem of missing data arises in most branches of the discipline, it has received little systematic treatment in the geographical literature. In an effort to overcome this deficiency, this paper reviews a number of methods for approaching the problem. Of the three classes of solutions-ad hoc, cartographic interpolation, and statistical-the statistical approaches appear to be preferable. In this review a modified version of the Orchard end Woodbury missing-information principle receives the greatest emphasis because it combines classical statistical theory with trend surface and spatial autoregressive models. Although the best solution of ell is to return to the experimental situation in order to collect supplementary data, this is often impractical or impossible. The analyst should then consider the estimation techniques presented here. The methods used to address the missing data problem thus be- come an important stage in the overall process of experimental design, sampling, and hypothesis testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the paper of MacLafferty entitled "Urban Structure and Geographical Access to Public Services". Relationship between urban structure and geographical access to public services; Nature of public services; Use of physical distance as a measure of accessibility; Concepts of efficiency; equality and equity.

Presents a first-person narrative of a geographer in the United States regarding the development of the "Geographical Analysis" journal. Dissatisfaction with the publication policies of the existing journals in 1966; Publication of the first issue in January 1969 with Richard A. McKee as the first Production Editor; Politicking, panic and interpersonal and intradisciplinary squabbling during the formative period.

Presents a first-person narrative of a geographer in the United States regarding developments in quantitative geography in the 1950s and 1960s. Arrival in the Department of Geography at the State University of Iowa in the fall of 1957; Appointment of Edwin Thomas to the department's faculty in 1958 which served as a catalyst in the accelerated and formal development of quantitative geography who brought with him his expertise in statistical analysis.

The article presents a rejoinder by the author on comments made by scholar David Stoddart on the paper "Carl Sauer and Cultural Evolution," by Michael Solot. Stoddart expresses or implies three points namely scholar Carl Sauer used the term areal differentiation several times in his writings, suggesting that this was his definition of geography, this was Sauer's prescription for geography in the morphology and the phrase in English is Sauer's. Sauer did use the expression in both the 1925 and 1941 papers, but what did he mean by it? In no instance did he ever use it as a prescription for geography but as a conceptual tool to indicate a continuing strand found throughout then current European geographical writing.

Comments on issues concerning the possible value of moving from the descriptive measure of pattern to fit a model to the map distribution. Explanation for the change in settlement pattern; Insights into the possible meaning of the patterns; Role of the modeling map distribution in geography.

Presents a response by A. Stewart Fotheringham to a commentary regarding his paper "Spatial Structure and Distance-Decay Parameters." Accession to the concerns of the critic with model misspecification and not multicollinearity; Argument on the alleged inadequacy of his interpretation of the sources of bias due to spatial autocorrelation; Elaboration on spatial structure effect in estimated distance-decay parameters.

As geographic information systems (GIS) are increasingly implemented in K–12 classrooms, the risk becomes one of teaching “buttonlogy” or simply how to point and click to complete certain functions. Through the development of a geospatial concept lexicon and corresponding geospatial task ontology along with simple concept-based tasks completed by students in different grade levels, this research has illuminated grade-related differences in geospatial concept recognition and understanding. In these experiments, simple paper and pencil tasks were given to 6th grade, high school, and undergraduate students to provide insight into different levels of concept understanding, specifically in terms of grade-related abilities to comprehend descriptions of spatial relationships. Results indicate significant differences in geospatial concept recognition, understanding, and use among the grade-based participants tested during the course of the project. These results can be used to inform the development of a “Minimal GIS” in which a pedagogic goal of grade-appropriate concept understanding becomes the driving force behind the GIS, suggesting the structure of an effective support system for spatial thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the question "who are 'we' and how have the remarkable changes over the past century in who are 'we' changed the discipline. Quotations from Charles Colby in 1935; Statement cited in James and Martin in 1978; Notion that geographers are basically men.

Biogeography has been consistently well represented in the Annals throughout the Association of American Geographers' first century. This sample of biogeographic research effectively illustrates the persistent questions explored by the subdiscipline as well as changes in the intellectual perspectives taken on them. Four fundamental issues occupied biogeographers throughout this period (spatial pattern and process, landscape change, human modification of biotic communities, and linking physical and biological systems), but shifting research emphases show clear parallels to the major paradigmatic trends of 20th-century geography, including environmental determinism, regionalism, positivism, and postmodernism. These shifts define a number of fairly distinct periods of research activity: an early (1904–1927) focus on equilibrium environmental control of biotic communities and their dynamics, regional analysis and vegetation mapping (1942–1966), an increasing emphasis on methodological sophistication that prompted emphasis of environmental variability (1967–1987), and a recent (1987–present) reexamination of landscape dynamics with a concern for heterogeneity in space and time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper introduces Roger Bacon's description of a system of plotting places with latitude and longitude in his thirteenth-century Opus Maius and raises questions about the nature and importance of the procedure he describes. It discounts previous claims that the procedure represented a fully developed map projection, but supports the case that Bacon had some understanding of the problems of representing a spherical earth on a flat plane. Bacon's system was innovative because he understood that the idea of coordinate systems could be transferred from a celestial to a terrestrial context, and that this idea had practical political-as well as spiritual-significance. But his ideas were not accepted until long after Ptolemy's Geography, which espoused a similar paradigm, reached Europe. Finally, Bacon's system seems innovative in the context of terrestrial cartography since it appears to assign equal geometric significance to each point in his "mapping-space." This departed from the route-enhancing space of the portolan charts and the center-enhancing space of the mappaemundi; it was a system that eventually was universally adopted for world mapping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper frames a perspective on the history of Western humanism, its role in shaping geographical inquiry through the centuries, and its essential message for the future practice of the discipline. Humanism is defined as the liberation cry of humanity, voiced at times and places where the integrity of life or thought was threatened or compromised, or when fresh horizons beckoned. The modes whereby the humanist spirit has been negotiated within the changing contexts of Western history reveal a cyclically-recurring drama which is here captured in the mythopoetic characters of Phoenix, Faust, and Narcissus. It is for its potentially emancipatory role that humanism merits attention today as Western scholars seek better communication with colleagues from other cultures in a common concern about global environmental problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's agricultural reforms and open door policy adopted since 1978 have had impact on the country's economic structure, population characteristics, and urban development. This paper examines the spatial implications of such changes in the light of the development of Zhujiang Delta located in the coastal region of South China. Market-oriented agricultural production, rural industrialization, migration of surplus farm labor, and the spread of small towns in the rural areas are some of the consequences of the reforms and are placed in the perspective of the coreperiphery theory of regional development. It is argued that the hybrid ’center-downward’ and ’periphery-upward’ approach in spatial development was adopted because it was politically more adaptable to the Chinese objectives of economic development, which continue to uphold Marxism, Maoism and Communist Party leadership. Through careful control of the destination of the rural migrants in conjunction with the policy of small town development, China hopes to establish a new spatial relationship between the core and the periphery on more equal footing. Currently the spatial structure of Zhujiang Delta displays a well-integrated network of towns of varying sizes being established to fill in gaps in the settlement hierarchy to effect spread of benefits from the core to its periphery. But contrary to expectations, spatial inequity in development persists as the core has advanced at a much faster pace than its periphery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What should be our society's relationship with nature? What are the intellectual causes of the current environmental crisis? These ’great questions’ of environmental studies are essentially humanistic inquiries into ethics and values. Humanists have often debated these questions in terms of Christian and Jewish traditions. One school of thought in particular holds the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) responsible for fostering despotic ideas towards nature. This paper demonstrates that the Bible's most persistent environmental message is that God confers human dominion over nature to righteous or faithful people, whereas God punishes transgressors with natural disasters. Recent advances in studies of the Bible as literature reveal ways to interpret the theme of human dominion over nature, with the resulting evolution of that concept throughout the books of the Bible. The biblical notions of natural justice and righteous individuals in harmony with animals find current expression in the modern environmentalist movement. A comparison of contemporary American personal beliefs with modern geography suggests further research on the disparity of a secular discipline addressing a largely religious American public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the French Intervention in Mexico, 1861-67, the French Ministry of Public Instruction established a scientific com- mission (Commission scientifique du Mexique, 1864-1867) that would perform functions similar to those of earlier missions to Egypt, Greece, and Algeria. This paper places the work of the Commission in the context of 19th-century French science and complements recent studies on scientific colonialism or imperialism. The role of geography and geographers is emphasized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Specialty groups are a relatively recent innovation within the Association of American Geographers (AAG), but have grown rapidly to play a major part in the functioning of the organization. This paper examines the role of specialization within and between disciplines, with special reference to geography, as a response to the complexity of knowledge and of scientific activity, and as a phenomenon of social organization. The scale and basis of organization of the specialty groups are seen as responses to needs for communication and survival. Natural and empirical views of the organization of disciplines and other academic divisions within the field of knowledge, and of the processes operating on individual career paths, are discussed. The empirical (or pragmatic) view provides the basis for analyzing the membership of AAG specialty groups to determine the structure of the current discipline and the trends to which it is subject. A multidimensional scaling and an elementary linkage analysis of the cross memberships of specialty groups for 1984 show patterns of affinity and divergence of topical interest and of general research paradigms. The revealed cores of the discipline confirm the earth-science, man-land and spatial traditions identified by Paulson (1964). In contrast, the area- studies tradition does not display any unified core, but links to the general body of geography through systematic concerns. Applied geography, historical geography and cartography are most central to the structuring of specialty group memberships and appear to be prominent sources of unity for those groups that represent the different traditions. A diversity-of-interest measure, based on an information statistic, reveals that socio-demographic (age and sex), institutional (Ph.D.-granting departments), and technological factors also play significant roles in structuring the pattern of specialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the influence of the geographer, Carl Sauer on American academic geography. Description of Sauer's rejection of evolution as basis for the study of culture; Explanation of the Sauer's definition of culture; Discussion of Sauer's distinction between physiography and physical geography.

Responds to author's commentaries on the article about gentrification and the rent gap. Explanation of the use of education and occupation as indicators of gentrification; Correlation betwen education and occupation; Discussion of the nature of the rent gap.

Time and change are basic concepts in Carl Sauer's cultural geography: how he used time and conceived change is the subject of this paper. I interpret his historical method in the context of reaction against turn-of-the-century theories of unilinear and providential cultural evolution in favor of cultural historical approaches. The roots of Sauer's anti-evolutionism are found in his early rejection of environmental determinism for an empiricist chorology of material culture traits and in his connection with contemporary anthropology. Anti-evolution, and an empiricist, chorological approach to geography are also characteristic of Sauer's mature work on cultural change. A comparison of his geographical practice with evolutionary thinking suggests that his emphasis on material expressions of culture as objects of study encourage genetic explanations of the products of culture change rather than theoretical explanations of evolutionary processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reliable index of ‘innate soil productivity,’ perhaps stored in a computerized geographic information system, would be of great value in choosing crops or tillage techniques, designating prime farmland, assessing land for tax purposes, aligning utility corridors, targeting price-support and soil conservation programs, and making other land use decisions. One problem with the creation of a productivity index is the fact that a given tract of land can often be used for different crops with yields that may not be well correlated with each other. In that case, the relative value of two tracts of land will depend on what is grown on them, a situation that allows a change in world market conditions to alter the fairness of a zoning map or tax structure. To help guide people trying to incorporate soil information in their regional data bases, this paper presents a map of the probable validity of a single-number index of soil productivity in a sample of 200 counties across the United States. This map shows some striking regional disparities in the validity of that kind of productivity index; these disparities seem to be related to a complex set of factors, including local crop mix, soil traits, climatic calendar, and management techniques, as well as some error inherent in the data source and the analytical methods used to make the map. Unraveling the variables that affect soil productivity in a given county is a difficult task, but it is necessary if we are to avoid some of the adverse economic and political consequences of an invalid measure of soil productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies on interstate conflict have shown that war is spatially contagious. These studies have, however, suffered from a limited definition of spatial contagion and have ignored other nongeographic explanations. In this paper, the effect of location on war behavior is tested using eight measures of spatial contiguity among 135 states. The tests support the idea that wars tend to cluster spatially, but the relationship is not as simple as had been believed previously. Examination of war data for African states showed that the geographic effect extends beyond first-order (immediate) neighbors. To analyze the global distribution of conflict, two regression models were tested. In the first which used structural predictors (political, social, economic, and military characteristics of the states), only the military variables were found to be significantly related to war, but he residuals showed positive spatial autocorrelation. An alternative regression model, with structural and spatial autoregressive terms, provided a better fit with uncorrelated residuals. The spatial predictor was more important than all other variables except military expenditures in explaining the global distribution of war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At Verona in 1320 Dante Alighieri delivered an address, later published as ‘A Question of the Water and of the Land,’ which dealt with the position and origins of the continental land mass and its mountains. In this cogently argued discourse the ideas expressed in Aristotle's Meteorologica and De caelo are blended with Dante's own cosmography and cosmogony, as expressed in his Divine Comedy. There is, however, a shift in emphasis from the poetical-theological explanations of the Inferno to an approach based on assumed physical principles. In essence, the land mass and its mountains were uplifted by the stars of Dante's eighth heaven, which attracted them by diffusing an ‘elevating virtue’ (akin to magnetism) and by causing vapors to rise within the land, thus swelling it. In this paper Dante's ideas on the origin and form of the land are presented and analyzed. I relate Dante's ideas to the theories of other natural philosophers of the Middle Ages, including Avicenna, Jean Buridan, and Ristoro d'Arezzo and show that thinking on earth science matters had in many ways reached a critical state by the fourteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at Carl Sauer's undergraduate and pre-Berkeley experiences in relation to his more mature views of geography. A biographical approach is used to illustrate the link between milieu and intellectual development. It is argued that Sauer's undergraduate days in Warrenton. Missouri were decidedly significant in shaping his worldview and that his later writings are better understood in light of his childhood and adolescent experiences. The conclusion points to the need to re-evaluate the repeatedly cited influence of Alfled Kroeber and Robert Lowie on Sauer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alonso (1973, 1978) has proposed a generalized spatial interaction model from which the four members of the traditional family of gravity models (Wilson 1971) can be derived as special cases. With the aid of AIonso's general theory, this paper discusses the relationship between the traditional gravity models in greater detail and describes the performance of a series of what are termed quasi-constrained gravity models. The systemic parameters in Alonso's general model are discussed in terms of trip generation and trip attraction modeling. These systemic parameters are shown to reflect the relative importance of "site" and "situation" variables in determining outflow and inflow totals. When the site variables are accurate surrogates for actual outflow and inflow totals, a doubly constrained gravity model is likely to be optimal in terms of replicating existing flow patterns or forecasting unknown patterns. When the site variables are inaccurate surrogates and when outflow and inflow totals are related to situation variables, then lesser-constrained gravity models are likely to be optimal. Members of the traditional family of gravity models are shown to be the extreme points on a continuous surface of gravity models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the diffusion of a colonization model from Posen to Palestine at the beginning of the twentieth century, it shows that the colonization process in Palestine initialed by the Zionist Organization in the period preceding the first World War was consciously influenced by geographical concepts and patterns developed two decades earlier by the German Colonization Commission in Posen. Within a short time of its implementation in Palestine, major changes were introduced in the original colonization model, as developed in Posen, in terms of both colonization methods and instruments. This was a result of the influence of specific political, cultural, and social circumstances prevailing in the Ottoman Empire in general and in Palestine in particular. One of the modifications, which proved subsequently to be of lasting importance, was the acceptance by the colonizing agency of a grass-roots collective-cooperative form of agricultural settlement established by penniless, highly motivated, socialist settlers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although we acknowledge the debt that mainstream behavioral geography owes to positivism, our central argument here is that much of that research tradition has now transcended its positivist roots and that we should preserve only those virtues of analytic discourse that appear to be of enduring value. In this paper we examine the strengths and weaknesses of analytic behavioral research and compare the perspective of this research with the viewpoints adopted by geographers espousing phenomenologist and Marxist philosophies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of exploration has hitherto focused largely on the description of the explorations themselves and on an analysis of their scientific-geographical findings. The fact that such exploration often is intrinsically related to political and social factors characterizing the society out of which it originates is consequently obscured, if not entirely neglected. This paper attempts to demonstrate that the genesis and the very purpose of the Great Siberian Expedition cannot be understood apart from the political and ideological climate of the 1840s and 1850s in Russia. It shows that the rapid and powerful growth of nationalist sentiment at this time was the main inspiration for the work of the young Russian Geographical Society. This sentiment dictated the exclusive task for geographers to study the Russian fatherland and, more specifically, it lent a special imperative to the study of Russian Asia. Members of the Society came to see this latter endeavor as a means for them to fulfill their patriotic responsibilities. Russia's acquisition of the Amur and Ussuri regions in the 1850s became closely associated with the general nationalist movement for Russia's renovation and resurrection, and thus geographical exploration of the terra incognita of southeastern Siberia offered a perfect opportunity for the members of the Geographical Society, in their unique capacity as geographers, to consummate actively their devotion to this cause. It is further suggested that the Great Siberian Expedition is not unique in its responsiveness to prevailing political sentiments and needs, but rather that this pattern is characteristic for much of geographical exploration, both in Russia and elsewhere. A more detailed consideration of these interrelationships in the history of exploration will lead to a deeper and more nearly complete understanding of the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the diversionary procedure of Chouinard and Fincher to level their critique on the article "Structural Marxism and Human Geography." Poststructural work of the article that needs to be analyzed; Arguments on the structural Marxist geographers that talk about class struggle that could not be engaging in reification; Impoverished materialism that is a driving force of idealism in the vies of structural Maxism.